People wave Russian flags as they protest in the center of the southern Ukrainian city of Sevastopol, the main base of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, on February 23, 2014 (AFP Photo / Vasily Batanov) / AFP

Ukrainian nationalists are suggesting the Russian language could be banned in the country, so the populist Russian nationalist LDPR party suggests fast-tracking Russian citizenship for ethnic Russians in Ukraine and their families.

MP Ilya Drozdov of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia on
Monday initiated a bill that allows Russian citizenship within
six month if the applicant successfully proves his or hers
Russian ethnicity. This can be done by presenting documents
proving that any of one’s direct ancestors had Russian
citizenship by birth. The politician also mentioned grandparents
and great-grandparents, apparently meaning that citizenship of
the Soviet Union and the Russian Empire can count as well.

Drozdov emphasized that his suggestion came about because of the
current political situation in Ukraine. “The adoption of this
amendment would allow to lawfully use the migration potential of
Ukrainian citizens of Russian ethnicity who desire to get Russian
citizenship,” the lawmaker explained. He added that the
potential influx of ethnic Russians would help to stabilize their
number in the country and prevent their replacement by people
from Central Asian states.

On Sunday the Ukrainian parliament canceled the 2012 law “On
State Language Policy” that allowed the country’s regions to add
more official languages to the existing Ukrainian, if these
languages were used by over 10 percent of population. The law was
originally passed in the interests of the Russian-speaking
industrial eastern part of the country where regional
legislatures quickly officially recognized the Russian language,
but also benefited two Western regions that have introduced
Romanian and Hungarian as official languages, and the Crimea
Region where lot of people speak Tatar. Currently, the Eastern
regions face mass demonstrations against the “Maidan” policies
and newly-appointed officials and most of all against the
infringement of the rights of the Russian speaking population.

According to some sources, the head of the Freedom Party, Oleg
Tyagnibok has recently spoke before his supporters in Kiev and
said that the use of Russian language should be criminalized and
all ethnic Russians should be stripped of citizenship and live
under the non-citizen status.

At the same time, Tyagnibok has said that the recent cancellation
of the language law was technical and promised to introduce a new
non-discriminative bill in the near future. He gave no details.

Russia had a simplified procedure of citizenship for residents of
former Soviet republics from the collapse of the USSR till 2009.
Over 2 million people have used this scheme and become Russians.
The rule has never been based on ethnicity though – for example,
many residents of the Republic of South Ossetia are ethnic
Ossetians – the Caucasian people of Iranian roots – and yet many
of them have received Russian passports hoping for protection
from neighboring Georgia.

In 2012 Vladimir Putin voiced an initiative to simplify the
citizenship procedure for the residents of the former Soviet
Union and descendants of Russian emigrants, but it has not yet
ended in a law.

The Russian ambassador to Ukraine has been recalled to Moscow for
consultations in connection with the political situation in the
country. On Monday Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev
commented. “We do not understand what is going on there,
there is a real threat to our interests and to the lives and
health of our citizens,” he noted.

Medvedev also added that currently Ukraine lacked legitimate
representatives of authority, and expressed surprise over Western
politicians holding opposite opinions.

“Strictly speaking, today there is no one there to communicate
with. The legitimacy of a number of power bodies is in huge
doubt,” the Prime Minister said at a press conference. “If
you consider people in black masks strolling through Kiev with
Kalashnikov rifles a government, then it will be difficult for us
to work with such a government," Medvedev stated.

“Some our foreign, western partners hold the opposite
opinion, they think these people to be legitimate power bodies. I
do not know what constitution and what laws they have been
reading, but I hold that it is some sort of conscience aberration
when you call something legitimate while in reality it is a
result of a mutiny,” the Russian official told reporters.